Published on Tuesday 24 January 2012 10:07
On a day with Saturday (January 21) with constant wind, a very wet pitch and an expectant crowd from the east coast, the team who wear the burial mask of Sutton Hoo on their shirts came over to assuage the memory of the week before and put Haverhill to the sword.
Haverhill’s scrum had some changes, with Simon Potter filling the Number 8 shirt vacated by Chris Flannery’s injury and centre Micky Lansdowne filling the lock position vacated by Martin Ransome’s retirement.
This being said, the scrum, though not as dominant in all facets of the set piece was performing well in the loose.
Playing against the wind, Haverhill were pressured from the start, with the Woodbridge side – which plays in Eastern Counties Division One – putting in some good hand work in the backs and strong rucking and mauling in the forwards.
Haverhill defended well, but the pressure eventually told, with the Woodbridge prop finally getting over the line in front of the posts for a converted try on eight minutes.
With the difficult wind, Haverhill’s lineout ball was often awry, but thrower George Foley took no prisoners on the Woodbridge short ball hitting player after player extremely hard, dumping them unceremoniously into touch with alacrity.
On 15 minutes a great catch and drive from Dave Quinney started to apply pressure, leading to Haverhill getting into the Woodbridge half for the first time.
Good forward play, with Alex Hieatt, Adrian Cooper and Lansdowne all putting in the yards in the rolling drive built the pressure on Woodbridge.
Finally, with a gap opened on the wing, a lovely floated kick from Gavin Hope saw a full speed Brad Gibson time his run perfectly to pick up and evade two tacklers on the line to touch-down on 19 minutes in the corner for 7-5. With the wind, the Adam Hunt kick was wide.
A ten metre scrum for Woodbridge was taken against the head, where Potter broke off the back and evaded four players hanging from him and crossed the line to score for 10-7 at the break.
The wind just proved too much for Woodbridge in the second half as they never crossed the Haverhill ten metre line throughout.
Half way through the second half, a great lineout catch from Marsh with a driving maul ensuing saw Lansdowne break out from 15 metres and cross the line for 15-7.
The Jury kick, floating in on the wind, just scraped the wrong side of the post.
The remainder of the game saw Haverhill attacking the Woodbridge line and the visitors defending well enough to keep Haverhill from crossing the whitewash again or the Haverhill move breaking down.
Haverhill will play Clacton at home on February 11 at 2pm in the next round of the Plate, with the winners going on to face wither Mersea or Southwold in the quarter-final.
For all the latest sport see Thursday’s (January 26) Echo.